Let's talk Trade Publications

[Quark]

What sign/print trade magazines and publications are you receiving / subscribed to?

 

[Kottwitz-Graphics]

I'm a subscriber to Sign Craft. I get Sign and Digital Graphics, Signs of the Times, and Sign Builders, all for free....

Sign Craft is the only one I keep.

 

[ams]

None because I don't believe in them and they aren't helpful to me. I got scammed by Sign of the Times back in the day and never took a second look at any of them.

 

[BobM]

Sign Craft is by far the best IMO.

 

[tbullo]

Sign Craft is the most relevant to what we do, but i look at Sign Builder too.

 

[Gino]

Most of them, but I think we're gonna be dropping them in the very near future. Not much good information in them any longer, unless you wanna buy some automated machinery. They are no longer trade magazines...... just advertising booklets and an avenue to pedal your wares.

 

[rjssigns]

Most of them, but I think we're gonna be dropping them in the very near future. Not much good information in them any longer, unless you wanna buy some automated machinery. They are no longer trade magazines...... just advertising booklets and an avenue to pedal your wares.

THIS^^^^

Write-ups used to be good in many of them. Not anymore. All of them seem to be penned by freelance writers that have no clue about the industry, techniques etc... You can tell by the lack of in depth content.

 

[AKProbeGT]

I get all the free ones. They sit around the house till summer time then I take them to the beach and read the highlights.

 

[Vinyldog]

I still have every one I've ever purchased. Boxes full of them from as far back as the 80's. Someday I'm actually going to read one. Probably after I retire.

 

[James Burke]

I suffer from two wonderful conditions called auto-didacticism and intellectual need. It's the ability (and compulsion) to self-educate. Thomas Jefferson and Leonardo da Vinci are just two of history's finest autodidactics. I intentionally maintain a fairly steep learning curve on purpose. Believe it or not, I actually read trade publications from totally un-related professions.

One pizza joint puts out all of their high-end trade publications for the public to read while they wait or dine. It's awesome good stuff. Their subject matter is spot-on with the basics like customer service and business management. And their pictures seem to be so much more appetizing than the stuff we typically deal with on a daily basis. I peruse a few industrial manufacturing publications as well (Modern Machine Shop, EDM Today and so on).

I discovered I was a hopeless "learning addict" when I began enjoying some of the medical journals found in the doctor's office.

But...my all-time favorite thing to do is learning new ways of implementing and innovating ideas from other trades to improve our bottom line.

We built two pieces of specialized equipment for our stone engraving business based on a really good idea I got while working for a commercial beekeeper one summer.

Go figure.

Those two items have increased our daily throughput exponentially. And the best part is that my competitors don't have them in their shops because they don't exist anywhere beyond my four walls.

JB

 

[visual800]

None. Back in the day SignCraft was the bomb, now not so much.

There is nothing in these that is worth the cover price, advertising crap portfolio